Principles of Inverse Computation and the Universal Resolving Algorithm

We survey fundamental concepts in inverse programming and present the Universal Resolving Algorithm (URA), an algorithm for inverse computation in a first-order, functional programming language. We discuss the principles behind the algorithm, including a three-step approach based on the notion of a perfect process tree, and demonstrate our implementation with several examples. We explain the idea of a semantics modifier for inverse computation which allows us to perform inverse computation in other programming languages via interpreters.